Why Is the West Angry Against Turkiye's Withdrawal From the Istanbul Convention?

10 years after its signing, Turkiye announced its withdrawal from the European Istanbul Convention on Combating Violence against Women and Preventing Domestic Violence.

On March 20, 2021, the Official Gazette published the text of a decision bearing the signature of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announcing Turkiye's official withdrawal from the Convention on Combating Violence against Women.

Ankara justified the withdrawal from the Convention because it contains two articles that encourage homosexuality and commented on this by the fact that the two articles weaken Turkish society's social, religious, and moral structure.

Several Turkish officials had called for the withdrawal from the Convention, expressing their fears that this agreement would reinforce concepts of homosexuality and contribute to the absence of values ​​in Turkish society.

Commenting on the withdrawal, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said in a tweet that his country is determined to raise the status of Turkish women in society while preserving the social structure without the need to imitate others.

For his part, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said, in a statement, that the presence or absence of international agreements does not reduce or increase our responsibilities to prevent any form of (potential) crime that our citizens will be exposed to.

He stressed that the Ministry of Interior, with the concerned authorities, is leading a process to protect women from violence in various ways, including an application on smartphones to report cases of violence, among other measures.

He expressed his categorical rejection of all forms of violence against women, indicating that the allegations of high crimes against women in Turkiye are unfounded.

 

Gender Definition

45 countries, most of them from the European Union, signed the Istanbul Convention, which Turkiye signed on May 11, 2011, and it entered into force in early August 2014, while Russia and Azerbaijan refused to sign. The signatory countries ratified it except for 13 countries that did not ratify the Convention yet.

The Istanbul Convention to Combat Violence against Women consists of 81 articles and 12 chapters. The third article includes the definition of gender, since the sex of an individual is determined in terms of his behavior, activity, and sexual orientation, not in terms of his biological makeup as male or female, and accordingly, society must treat him based on his behavior.

In other words, according to the Convention, a woman is not a female with her biological and physiological characteristics, but she can be a man who behaves as a female and wants to be treated as a female by society.

Article 4 prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and punishes anyone who discriminates against transgender people, including psychological violence.

Ankara confirms that it has local laws that prohibit all forms of violence against women and impose penalties on those who commit any violations against them. The violence that some practice against women is not due to a lack or weakness in the laws but rather to a lack of compliance with the laws on their part.

The official spokesperson for the ruling Justice and Development Party in Turkiye, Omer Celik, had stated that Turkiye had taken revolutionary steps aimed at protecting and preserving women and preventing their humiliation.

Under the Convention, educational curricula must include lessons on gender that are imposed on students, as one of the articles of the Convention says that the state must contribute to the elimination of gender stereotypes, including through educational materials.

The Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro referred to the matter by saying that the document known as the Istanbul Convention has harms because it requires schools to teach children lessons about gender.

 

Destructive Ideology

Turkiye was not the first country to withdraw from the Convention, but Poland preceded it in July 2020, when Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro announced that his country would withdraw from the European Istanbul Convention.

The British BBC quoted that Ziobro stated that the reason for the withdrawal was the damages included in the agreement, which impose gender education for school students, violate parental rights, and contain elements of an ideological nature, he said.

The Polish Minister of Justice added that the withdrawal from the Convention ratified by Warsaw in 2015 aims to strengthen traditional family values, stressing that Polish laws have provided full protection for women in Poland.

In response to protesters who objected to the withdrawal from the Convention and said the withdrawal legitimized violence against women, Polish Prime Minister Andrzej Duda said that promoting LGBT rights was a more destructive ideology than communism itself.

It means that the Convention violates the rights of the parents because the parents do not have the right to object to the abnormal behavior of their son, and if the son is subjected to any objection by the parents, they are entitled to punishment on the pretext of psychological violence against the boy who chose to be a female.

 

Sharp Criticism

Turkiye has been criticized by the Western community following its decision to withdraw from the agreement, despite Ankara's assertion that it has laws that protect and respect women and that its withdrawal was in order to preserve Turkish society from disintegration.

US President Joe Biden called Turkiye's withdrawal from the Convention "disappointing." In a statement, he pointed out the increase in crimes and incidents of violence against women in many countries of the world, précising Turkiye, which is the first signatory to the Convention.

Biden said that Turkiye's decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention abruptly and without reason is "a deep disappointment," noting that this step negatively affected the international movement to end violence against women worldwide.

The Deutsche Welle website quoted a German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, saying that Turkiye's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, signed in 2011, which aims to protect women from domestic violence, sends a wrong signal to Europe and Turkish women and that "Neither cultural nor religious nor other national traditions can serve as an excuse for ignoring violence against women."

For its part, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it deeply regrets Turkiye's decision to withdraw from the treaty, noting that the measure is a new regression with regard to respect for human rights.